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Frankfurt 2013

While this writer knows Zender as the maker of (mostly) fine body kits for German marques such as Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, the company has also been known to make kits for Italian autos. Its latest product, for example, has been applied to the Fiat 500 Abarth, resulting in what it calls the Abarth 500 Corsa Stradale Concept. We're not quite sure how we managed to miss it at the Frankfurt Motor Show, with its bulging fender flares, new front and rear fascias and side skirts, exhaust pip

By our story count, this year's Frankfurt Motor Show was one of the busiest auto shows on record. We brought you more than 70 reveals from the center of the action, and are still finding and compiling a lot of other content with Frankfurt-origins as well.

It's easy to focus all the attention on the Peugeot 308 R Concept, thanks to its two-tone paint job and 270-horsepower engine. For the more average European, though, we have the standard Peugeot 308. The cleanly styled, five-door is Peugeot's bread-and-butter offering, competing against the Ford Focus, Volkswagen Golf and other C-segment cars.

Judging by how long we waited to get a clear shot of the Mercedes-Benz S500 Plug-in Hybrid, you'd have thought hybrid cars were only driven by Terminators and that the technology arrived only 48 hours ago through a wormhole in the Mercedes stand. The newest member of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class hybrid band - joining the S400 Hybrid and S350 BlueTEC Hybrid, it hits notes like a 5.5-second sprint from standstill to 62 miles per hour, up to 19 miles of ion-powered running and uses three liters of gas

The Nissan e-NV200, currently in the final phases of testing with FedEx fleets in various countries, will be getting more demanding cargo next year in Barcelona when it goes into service as a taxi. Unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show by Carlos Ghosn and with the mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, in attendance, the e-NV200 is the van slightly reworked into a unique design and resting on a Leaf electric powertrain.

The 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show has come to a close at last. Well, almost. Expect to see a few more stories out of Germany to trickle in over the next day or so, as we empty our memory cards, take one last look through our notes and order our belongings for the long flight back home.

Mansory has, yet again, taken a supercar and turned the dial up to 11. Or maybe 12 or 13. This time the base car is none other than the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, a V12-powered GT car. Compared to Mansory's previous Ferrari GT-based creation, the Rambo-inspired Stallone that had used both the 599 and 612 as its base, the new La Revoluzione is a welcome departure.

We're going to go ahead and give the marketing wizards at Fiat the benefit of the doubt, and say that they didn't have some regrettable American history in mind when they dubbed the latest iteration of the Dodge Journey Fiat Freemont "Black Code." Suffice it to say that such a special edition sobriquet wouldn't fly here in The States.

Jelly-bean shape aside, the Citroën C4 Picasso is one people mover we wouldn't be ashamed to drive. It looks like a concept car, except it isn't - it's just a five-passenger MPV that's meant to get a family about as quickly and comfortably as possible. The stylish new Picasso first arrived in April, representing the second generation of the French MPV, and packing a range of small four-cylinder gas and diesel engines. We won't dig into all six engines, but we can promise you this: there's n

One of the highlights of covering a European auto show like Frankfurt is the amount of forbidden fruit on hand. Most of the cars we admire from across the pond, like this Škoda Octavia RS, are on display, allowing us to see them, sit in them and push their buttons.

On top of the funktastic Cactus Concept, Citroën showed its new C-Elysée racecar, which will campaign the World Touring Car Championship with Sebastian Loeb and Yvan Muller at the helm. The C-Elysée racer debuted back in July packing a 1.6-liter, turbocharged four with 380 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque.

If the results of our totally informal, completely unscientific poll are anything to go by, Americans are eager to get their hands on small utility vehicles like the Fiat Panda. And it's easy to see why – accessibility, relatively low price and 4x4 capability are traits that ought to work in America just as in the rest of the world. Indeed, Fiat has sold 500,000 or so Panda models over the past 30 years all across Europe.

Hyundai strutted its tiny but fashionable i10 onto the Frankfurt floor today, showing off the new, second-generation city car to the assembled media. The i10 was originally unveiled in August, although at the time, we didn't have much info on powertrains or other items.

Peugeot, being a French company, is a bit weird. Take the RCZ coupe, for example. It's a car that's as subtly handsome as an Audi TT, with a certain slickness that only French cars can pull off. Still, it's never been an outstanding performer, resting more or less as a style icon atop the Peugeot lineup. With the RCZ R, which was unveiled at the 2013 Goodwood Festival of Speed in July, France's oldest automaker is trying to add some kick to the RCZ formula.

If you were to surmise that Skoda is to Volkswagen as Mercury was to Ford, Plymouth was to Chrysler or Lancia is to Fiat, you wouldn't be far off. It's not quite luxury but not really sporty either, and it doesn't have many stand-alone products. But the Rapid is an exception.

There's nothing like the yearly reminder of the Frankfurt Motor Show to put our wagon jealousy into top gear. Be they from Alpina, Honda, Opel or Volkswagen; Europeans have access to long-roof rides that we only get to sample with a plane ticket and a Hertz Club Gold card.

This past May, Skoda pulled in to the Worthersee festival – a gathering of Volkswagen Group hot-hatch enthusiasts in Austria – with a gussied-up version of its Rapid sedan. It was awesome, but we missed it because a) we weren't there and b) let's face it, it's a Skoda. But the Czech automaker was kind enough to bring its Rapid Sport concept with it to Frankfurt this week to give us the opportunity to correct that wrong by seeing it up close and bringing it to your computer, tablet, s

With a starting price of under $30,000 in the US, one might be wondering how Mercedes-Benz plans to eke out a profit on its new entry-level CLA-Class. The answer, as with most other German offerings, will almost certainly be found on its long options list. And while there will be typical creature comforts like moonroofs and uprated stereos on the list, Mercedes is evidently also keen to cash in on the personalization craze that has been padding the bottom lines of brands like Mini and Fiat.

It's with some sadness that we present to you the Suzuki iV-4 Concept – there's absolutely no way we'll ever see a production Suzuki based off this conceptual design in the States, despite the fact that the brand has quite a small-SUV heritage on our shores. Of course, we won't be seeing any new Suzuki passenger cars or trucks in the US at all...

While Porsche was unveiling the new Nürburgring-dominating 918 Spyder downstairs in Hall 3 here at the Frankfurt Messe, there was another Porsche supercar quietly and discretely on display upstairs in the same hall. That, of course, was the 959. But not just any 959: this was the original Gruppe B prototype.

Despite riding on a unibody and being more of a softroader than a proper 4x4, the Dacia Duster has always sort of reminded us of the Nissan XTerra. In other words, it's basic, hard-wearing, handsome and affordable in a really compelling way. In the US market, that hasn't worked out to big sales for the Nissan, but globally that formula has chalked up some big sales – 400,000 units in 3 years – for Renault's Romanian bargain brand. In fact, it's worked so well that Nissan has cribbed